OK, so that article is saying that ISIS is basically Muslims wanting nationhood and they have an army of radical gun-toting Muslims who are willing to kill to get there. I like how it admits that ISIS is a religious group based on Muslim theology.

Gotta read the whole article Ed! Part III goes into detail about the concept of the pending apocalypse (Its not just for crazy ass Christians!).

To be fair in the near term the idea of a Caliphate is a core idea, as it is with AQ.

*I missed the comment about it admitting that its a religious group based off Muslim theology. To be more accurate I would say they are a religious group based off their interpretation of Islamic theology. People are Muslims, their religion is Islam.

I read the article. It seemed to me that making the distinction that ISIS wants an "apocalypse" is only relevant as a response to the erroneous idea that ISIS is not religious. I understand that people are trying to figure out why a group who wants...literally...to set up a physical nation of Muslims living under some political structure from 1000 years ago...is at all interested in bombing/terrorizing western nations.

It seems more obvious to me that, once one looks past the bizarre religious rhetoric, ISIS just wants to attack western countries because they see them as preventing ISIS from accomplishing its goals.

It's classic "I do what I want and i'll kill/hurt/maim you if you try to stop me" behavior. The only difference is that the justification is religious.

It's gangster mentality minus the liquor. Remember that most of the Iraq Bathists ended up in ISIS, and they were about money and power. Free chicks, money, power and land is how armies were raised all the way through the 18th century. You dont have to be a believer as long as you are a doer.

It's gangster mentality minus the liquor. Remember that most of the Iraq Bathists ended up in ISIS, and they were about money and power. Free chicks, money, power and land is how armies were raised all the way through the 18th century. You dont have to be a believer as long as you are a doer.

Actually in my experience most of the Baathists ended up in nationalist groups, the same ones that had AQI on the ropes during the Awakening-but when the Shia central government assumed it had everything under control enough that it didn't need our help and started going after those elements many of them ended up in what is now ISIS.

There was always some mid-level management, particularly from the security services, that ended up in AQI but most of the foot soldier were not (those foot soldiers were called by the motivations you espouse much of the time, that and it afforded young men from fringe tribes social mobility they wouldn't have in the normal Sunni Arab convention).

As a side note from much of that expertise is also now ending up in ditches/floating down rivers with holes in their head as ISIS consolidates power too since they were useful for a time, but less so now.

It's gangster mentality minus the liquor. Remember that most of the Iraq Bathists ended up in ISIS, and they were about money and power. Free chicks, money, power and land is how armies were raised all the way through the 18th century. You dont have to be a believer as long as you are a doer.

I think that's the important point that Ray is making. In the case of ISIS, it's not just about doing, you actually must be a believer, not just a doer. I get the impression that being a non-Muslim member of ISIS is an impossibility. ISIS is anti-everything that is not Islam.

You could send a bunch of interfaith unitarian universalists into Syria with guns to fight on the side of ISIS, but my suspicion is that they would not be treated well.

I think that's the important point that Ray is making. In the case of ISIS, it's not just about doing, you actually must be a believer, not just a doer. I get the impression that being a non-Muslim member of ISIS is an impossibility. ISIS is anti-everything that is not Islam.

You could send a bunch of interfaith unitarian universalists into Syria with guns to fight on the side of ISIS, but my suspicion is that they would not be treated well.

I beg to differ. There can't be that many dimmented psychopaths in ISIS. You didn't have to believe in Hitlers vision to be in the wermacht. You just had to play along. I believe ISIS as we get to know them have their moderates and their internal SS. If your a gangster, youll say anything to get what you want, including how awesome they want you to say Islam is. Chicks and money, or death. Decide.

If your a gangster, youll say anything to get what you want, including how awesome they want you to say Islam is.

That's exactly it. You have to say the creed. Ask a unitarian universalist to recite the creeds necessary to be part of ISIS and they won't. Ask a dyed in the wool atheist to say that they believe in the Q'uran and stand for Islam, and they won't.

I think what you are saying is that there are non-religious members of ISIS, or that ISIS provides cover for numerous "bad people" who will say anything or do anything to fit in. That's possible especially in some random dudes who are possibly at the lowest levels of ISIS or are living in ISIS-controlled areas, but it is highly unlikely that those types of people are in the majority, at least in the organization of ISIS, which holds the ideology alive.

Now you could also be arguing that ISIS is just a bunch of atheist psychopaths using Islamic rhetoric as blustering cover for their activities, but 1. that's unlikely, 2. that doesn't change the fact that the rhetoric is religious.

I think you are also under the impression that the political ideology and the organization that supports it necessarily are the same people who are holding the guns and fighting on the ground. That's not true, right? I mean, ISIS is not a dictatorship, right?

ISIS's wet dream is to see a full-scale US invasion of Sham. This would give them a massive recruitment and propaganda boost, not to mention increased donations from Gulf Arabs. It would waste trillions of taxpayer dollars and only result in more terrorists. ISIS has sanctuaries in Libya, Yemen, and Somalia and an assault on Raqqa would only shift their center of gravity to one of those countries.

The very best thing we can do is to defeat their ideology. This means slowly starving them of resources and propaganda opportunities until not even their own fighters believe any more. In my opinion, this can only be done with the full cooperation of Turkey and this requires a settlement with the Kurdish factions. Turkey is where ISIS supply lines and recruitment pipelines run. Cut those supply lines and you starve the beast. Turkey can make it happen but doesn't want to. Is it because of Erdogan's ambitions of a revived Ottoman Empire? The desire to counter-balance Kurdish ambitions with ISIS and Nusra? These are the things we need to understand and solve for.

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ISIS's wet dream is to see a full-scale US invasion of Sham. This would give them a massive recruitment and propaganda boost, not to mention increased donations from Gulf Arabs. It would waste trillions of taxpayer dollars and only result in more terrorists. ISIS has sanctuaries in Libya, Yemen, and Somalia and an assault on Raqqa would only shift their center of gravity to one of those countries.

The very best thing we can do is to defeat their ideology. This means slowly starving them of resources and propaganda opportunities until not even their own fighters believe any more. In my opinion, this can only be done with the full cooperation of Turkey and this requires a settlement with the Kurdish factions. Turkey is where ISIS supply lines and recruitment pipelines run. Cut those supply lines and you starve the beast. Turkey can make it happen but doesn't want to. Is it because of Erdogan's ambitions of a revived Ottoman Empire? The desire to counter-balance Kurdish ambitions with ISIS and Nusra? These are the things we need to understand and solve for.

Unfortunately, this is the worst month of the year for turkeys. Many of them will lose their heads to the pilgrim jihad of western human rituals.

That was a good read, fascinating from several angles. I found some of the perspectives interesting until I read that the author's primary work leading up to it was on LH and then it made more sense as to where she is coming from. The research, most of which was interviews with Syrians or refugees throughout 2014, also explains why she didn't delve into the evolution of the group that I'd described earlier (i.e. the AQ->JTJ->AQI->MSCI->ISI->ISIL/ISIS lineage which is both descriptive and inaccurate to a degree without being able to illustrate umbrella aspects and such).

One challenge I think we're having with this is people start to understand ISIS from when they start paying attention to it, without a deep understanding of their history/evolution the perspective can be slanted, or if you've spent your life studying the evolution of LH in S. Lebanon than it is easy to compare ISIS in Syria to that model and expect it to take some form of it.

Many of her ideas for how to counter it have merit though.
r-
Ray

------ Follow up post added November 16th, 2015 10:43 PM ------

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris snell

ISIS's wet dream is to see a full-scale US invasion of Sham. This would give them a massive recruitment and propaganda boost, not to mention increased donations from Gulf Arabs. It would waste trillions of taxpayer dollars and only result in more terrorists. ISIS has sanctuaries in Libya, Yemen, and Somalia and an assault on Raqqa would only shift their center of gravity to one of those countries.

The very best thing we can do is to defeat their ideology. This means slowly starving them of resources and propaganda opportunities until not even their own fighters believe any more. In my opinion, this can only be done with the full cooperation of Turkey and this requires a settlement with the Kurdish factions. Turkey is where ISIS supply lines and recruitment pipelines run. Cut those supply lines and you starve the beast. Turkey can make it happen but doesn't want to. Is it because of Erdogan's ambitions of a revived Ottoman Empire? The desire to counter-balance Kurdish ambitions with ISIS and Nusra? These are the things we need to understand and solve for.

I think your point about Turkey & the Kurds is dead on; I was back in Erbil this week and its clear that the most effective element we have in this is the Pesh-but any efforts we make to make them more effective as a force also threatens Turkey (and Iran, and Iraq, to the degree to which we care about that).

I'd also argue that if we want to counter their ideology by letting their inability to govern collapse the organization on itself (again) we have to find accommodation with Asad...going back to the idea that nobody wants to admit that all along we've never really cared if Asad fell and now that Russia doubled down by going in perhaps its time to acknowledge that our national interests rank isolating ISIS above deposing his regime and working toward political accommodation here. Sadly our gulf partners won't like that at all and will likely view it as confirmation that from their perspective the nuclear deal with Iran makes the U.S. an ally of their Persian enemy.

Good times. I just hope to not earn a Syrian Campaign Medal, b/c as you said, it would be ISIS's wet dream and while slaughtering them would be fun for a minute the long term occupation that we'd have to do would suck.

As much as I hate to say this, it appears to be a Win-Win for terrorist.
Postponing or cancelling an event because of terror, they win through fear. Continue with the event, and they successfully kill and maim many, they win at their objective of killing.

the aim...should be unambiguously stated the destruction of muslim cities, the killing of muslim workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout the islamic world.

... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit targets of strategic importance.

I can't help but find the irony in the Bomber quote since strategic bombing in WWII was a massive waste of resources with limited tangible effects. (Never mind the moral issues associated with it, efficacy is what I care about and it doesn't have much).

Put another way, if everyone is serious about doing something about it-it won't be done from the air. Only the messy work of going in on the ground can do that and I don't see people lining up outside the recruiting offices to join the Marine Corps or the Army.